SwitchBack: A Paranormal Werewolf Romance (Knightsbridge Canyon Series Book 1) (14 page)

The
she
, the
I
, the
whoever we were
took over and, despite best intentions, ran us out of the pool house, back under the gate, and off into the night of the hills above Berkeley.

Tilden Park and other state and local lands formed a wall against development to the east, and so I ran northeastward along the ridges and hills all the way to San Pablo Reservoir. In that peculiar pellucid state my two minds melded, the animal and the woman, into something more than either.

I knew what I was doing quite clearly. The animal did not control me now, not after threescore or more changes, but neither did I control it. Instead, I was just myself, in a different state of mind.

Have you ever been consumed by desire or other strong emotion – anger, grief, depression? You were still yourself, but changed, different. That’s what it was like for me.

In human form the thought of chasing down an animal and sinking my teeth into its warm flesh would have revolted me, but now it seemed like the most reasonable and desirable thing, and I had to have what I desired. If I could not have Will in this form – and oh, wouldn’t that be a surprise, a hundred-pound furry wolf bitch leaping into bed with him – then I would hunt, kill, and eat.

I picked up the trail of a yearling buck, full of power and life. He would be small – this part of California was too hunted out of really big racks to ever see the magnificent stags the Pacific Northwest boasted – so I had no fear of being gored. There was a good reason wolves in the wild hunted in packs: not even a great grey male could take down something like a full-grown caribou by himself, much less a beta bitch like me, but this one smelled hardly larger than I was.

He’d meandered here and there, nibbling on shoots and low-hanging branches, dropping scat and leaping small streams. I leaped them too, closing in on the buck until I spotted him in a thicket of manzanita.

When he spooked, I was after him, and over a short sprint I was faster, with my ranging lope eating up the ground between us. In the night, my senses outmatched his, my strength the greater, my hunger tipping the balance. I sank my teeth into his haunch, and when he shook me off I snapped and hamstrung him. After that, it was a mercy to open his throat and let his life spill out on the ground.

Don’t weep for the buck, dear reader. He has his place in the great web of nature. Without him we would have no children of the night, no songs to the moon of wolf and cousin coyote, no grace of puma or, in times long past, no great grizzly or even tribes of Man. And without those ferocious predators, the trees and bushes and all the growing plants would be stripped of their flowers and shoots and bark, and all would soon fall under the predations of the herds of millions of grazing creatures.

Nature is a balance, and for this one night, I was truly part of that.

If you want to weep for something, weep for yourselves, who have never known this kind of life.

Once I had eaten my fill, I left the kill for the others that would come – the bobcat and the vulture and the condor and the other carrion-eaters that must also feed: nature’s garbage crew, who would render death into new life in a never-ending cycle.

Speaking of returning to the room…

“Oh Miss Scott.” The concierge waved me over. “You have a package.”

My heart thudded against my chest as I stared at the box in his hand. This wasn’t in the plan. No one should be sending me anything.

About the size of a compressed oval hatbox, it was shrink-wrapped with my name in black permanent ink on the outside and no return address.

“Um, do you know who left this for me?” I asked as he handed it over. It smelled like flowers and the green scent of grass and cut stems, but that didn’t make sense. No one was supposed to know I was here, which meant someone was following us or had bugged us or something, maybe through one of our phones. I was always suspicious of those GPS apps.

“It came in with the flower delivery guy.” The concierge tilted his head. “Ooh, maybe it’s a gardenia. They sometimes wrap them up on ice like that. Maybe your boyfriend got it for you.”

“Maybe,” I said, but I wasn’t betting on it.

I woke Will up when I got to the room and opened the package. It wasn’t a gardenia. It was an animal heart, a canine’s to be exact, bigger than a Chihuahua, but just about the size of a cocker spaniel. Before the first change I wouldn’t have known that, but now, somehow, I did.

The room phone rang.

“Don’t answer that,” I said. I was spooked and all I wanted to do was get out of here.

“It’s just the wake-up call. I set it for seven, and if I don’t answer it’ll just keep ringing.”

The minute he picked up the hotel landline, my own cell phone went off. I looked at the caller ID. “It’s Amber,” I said, and answered. But it wasn’t Amber, it was Elle, on Amber’s line.

“I just wanted to tell you, Ashlee.” Elle’s voice was muffled, and it sounded hoarse, like there was a catch in it. “Spanky’s gone. Got any ideas?”

Elle wasn’t usually sentimental, but she was about that dog if anything.

I stared in horror at the heart on ice, dreading the thought that passed through my brain. Nobody could be that sick, could they?

“Umm…” I told her about what I’d just received.

Elle cursed like a sailor, dropping F-bombs left and right. “There goes the plan, having Amber wear a wig and pose as you while we keep her guarded. Somehow the perp figured out where you are.”

“Yeah, I got that,” I said drily. “What now, Maestro?”

“You’re not safe there anymore.”

“I’m not safe back at your house.”

“Safer than in some hotel.”

“Why don’t Will and I go to my apartment?”

“There’s no one to help protect you there either,” Elle argued.

“Come on home, Ashlee,” I could hear Amber say in the background. Funny, I think that’s the first time I’d heard that in a long time.

Home.

Maybe that was the difference between love and like, between family and friends. Your family might drive you crazy and vice versa, but when the chips are down, they’ll be there. It brought a lump to my throat.

“Okay,” I husked. “We’ll come home.” Will nodded solemnly as I clicked off my phone, then I took the battery out. “Yours too,” I said, pointing at his old Nokia. “No battery, no tracking.”

“Let’s search our stuff,” he said as he complied. We did, but didn’t find anything. Hey, we’re not some kind of secret agents, all right? Maybe the police have a scanner or detector gizmo.

I put it out of my mind as we packed, making sure to keep the bloody carton intact for evidence. Come to think of it, I doubted it was Spanky’s. I would have known by the smell, wouldn’t I?

I hoped.

I prayed.

When we got home, the house seemed like a tomb. Amber stayed seated on the davenport in the family room, a big glass of wine in her hand, and looked at me with accusing eyes red from crying. Elle met us halfway and quivered with energy and anger. My mother floated above them, her ethereal arms outstretched as if she wanted to hold them. They couldn’t see her, but it made me feel a bit better to know she was there.

“Where’s J.R.?” I asked as Will dropped our suitcases.

“At his father’s,” Elle replied. “We thought it best to hold off a few days on telling him. Just in case Spanky comes back.”

“He’s not coming back.” Amber stood up. “Not until Ashlee gets her shit together…” She trailed off as Elle put a hand on her arm. My sister looked at me with wounded resentment and I couldn’t blame her.

“I know. I know. I’m sorry.”

Amber looked like she wanted to say something nasty and cutting, but held back. You gotta give her credit for that. Like Dad says, we’re not responsible for our feelings, just our actions.

Sometimes I can’t stand him too, because he’s usually right. It’s annoying.

Will made himself scarce and went up to my room. We’d dropped off the cooler at the police station on the way into town and had spent a few minutes talking with Knightsbridge’s finest.

“This is all my fault, Amb,” I apologized again.

“Damn straight it is.” Amber sniffed. She looked miserable, and this time that didn’t make me the least bit happy.

“Amber,” Elle scolded. “We talked about this.”

“No,” Amber turned on Elle. “You talked, I listened. Well, I’m tired of listening. Somebody’s going to have to take matters into her own hands,” she said and she headed for the garage.

“Amber, don’t do anything foolish.” Elle followed her, sounding just like my mother.

I winced, remembering all of those fights we had when we were in high school and I had refused to give my sister the car keys when she had a mad on. She loved to drive recklessly at high speeds when she was pissed off. Hopefully Elle could talk her down.

Alone in the room for the moment – at least, with no corporeal beings – I rounded on my mother, who was looking at me with sorrow in her eyes. “Can’t you do anything?”

Mom sighed and looked heavenward as if listening to a voice I couldn’t hear. After a moment, she said, “I can tell you this, dear. You are going to have to stop playing the victim and take responsibility for your actions.”

“What does that mean?” I railed at her. “I can’t just tell everyone I’m a werewolf. How will that solve anything?”

“Blood calls to blood, Ashlee, and you have a blood debt on your hands. Maybe it’s time you figured out what the spirits want from you.” She said this as she briefly cradled my cheek, and then disappeared.

I sighed and went to the bedroom. Will was sound asleep and snoring, which bugged me. You’d have thought he’d had the best night's sleep last night, going to bed early and all.

Guys.

I pulled my laptop out from under the bed and started scouring the net. By dinnertime, I had some idea of what I had to do. After a glum meal of leftovers, we all went to bed early. I fell asleep immediately; after all, I hadn’t had much rest last night.

Will had gone down to the living room and watched television, and I didn’t even notice when he crawled back under the covers with me.

Sean Gottlieb finished cleaning up after the dog in the pet carrier, cursing the day he ever took up with Jeanetta Macdonald. He stared at the poor little miniature Schnauzer, who looked at him with the saddest eyes. He’d had to kidnap the pet and keep him at his place, as the animal shelter was the first place they would look, or maybe Jeanetta’s. Eventually he was supposed to pretend to find the dog, which would give him the opportunity to cozy up to one of the twins.

“I’m sorry, Spanky, but the bitch has got me wrapped around her little finger.”

Spanky cocked his head and then settled his muzzle on his front paws to listen.

“Always, Sean do this. Sean do that. Sean take out the garbage. Sean drop your pants and bend over and take it up the ass. Sean, –”

The sound of high heels clicking on the linoleum of his kitchen floor cut him off.

“Sean dear.” Jeanetta’s sculpted tones matched her sculpted body and Jeff couldn’t help but lose his train of thought when she came at him like that. To him, Jeanetta was drop dead gorgeous, and buff as a female bodybuilder. If she wanted to beat the shit out of him, she could, and he knew it.

After her brother had died, she’d turned over a new leaf, went back to school on the Park Service’s dime and gotten some kind of environmental degree. She’d eventually become the full-time head of the Animal Rights Coalition as well as keeping her status as part-time ranger at Knightsbridge Canyon State Park. Obviously the salary at the nonprofit suited her better than the pay the government could provide.

If she treated him like a scrub, she definitely made up for it in the bedroom. Today she was dressed in one of her favorite leather and latex outfits, suitable for indoor wear only.

“So, where’s the little mongrel?” Jeanetta singsonged in a way that made Spanky cringe. It made Sean think of Cruella de Vil in that dog movie. “Why there you are! I bet your owners are worried sick about you. But don’t you worry. You’re exactly where you’re supposed to be.”

With a flick of her single-tail whip, she soon had Sean Gottlieb crawling on all fours behind her. Every time the leather tip hit him, he shuddered with a mixture of pain and pleasure, anticipating what was to come.

It was so bad, but so good anyway.

Spanky hunkered down, put his paws over his eyes, and dreamed about home.

GONE TO SEE MOM. BACK LATER. STAY SAFE. –WILL. XOXO

I padded down into the living room and got a glass of orange juice from the kitchen when I heard voices coming from the garage. I tiptoed into the laundry room and put my ear to the garage door as my sister began to talk.

“It was him, Elle. It was Sean Gottlieb. He was Jeanetta’s boyfriend back in high school and they’re still together. I saw it all in my dream. He’s been doing the dirty work for Jeanetta, and she’s still pissed off because Shane went out with Ashlee that night instead of me, and he got mauled by a mountain lion or whatever it was back when we were in high school.”

“What do you want me to do, Amber? Dreams aren’t exactly probable cause, not to mention the overtime costs to the city,” Elle argued. “I have to have a good reason to request Hernandez put him under surveillance. Something better than my girlfriend had a vision and our dog has been kidnapped.”

Holy shit, I thought. Maybe Amber’s talents weren’t so latent as Mom suggested.